Dude! Take Your Turn!
A Gaming Life
Boardgame Geek Top 100 – Played or Play? 70-61
It’s week 4 of my weekly look at the Boardgame Geek Top 100 games to see how many I’ve played and how many I even want to play.
It’s a rather blah week, for a lot of reasons, but also just because there aren’t many games in this week’s entry that I’ve played!
It’s like the Cosmos saw all those comments like “oh, you’ve played a lot of these games!” and said “Let’s have no more than that.”
Still, there is two of my favourite games on this list, so there is that.
It’s also the first week of June, which means Summer is just around the corner!
Let’s have a picture of a nice sunset and beach to lift all of our spirits.
It’s something I think that we could all use.
And on that note, let’s begin!
Roll for the Galaxy – App Beta First Impressions
A while back, I reported that Temple Gates, developer of the wonderful Race for the Galaxy and Shards of Infinity apps (the latter of which a review is coming soon!), was going to be rolling out the beta for the app version of Roll for the Galaxy, the dice version of Tom Lehmann’s classic card game.
(Is that enough links in the first paragraph? Should I do more?)
Well, now the beta’s finally arrived!
I’ve been in it since Friday night (May 29) and I’ve been monkeying around with it all weekend, both in multiplayer and single-player games against the AI.
How well is it going right off the bat?
(Please note that all screenshots are from the beta so the graphics could change, and these impressions are also from the beta, obviously, so things could change in gameplay as well)
Let’s take a look.
New to Me – May 2020
We’re back!
Pandemic notwithstanding, I managed to actually get a new to me game (and a new to me expansion) play in with the wife this last month.
I have some new games coming so hopefully this trend will continue into June as well.
It does feel good to finally be playing games again.
It felt wrong to suddenly not be playing games, like watching Betwitched and then suddenly having the second Darren sprung on you.
Be that as it may, we’ll keep this game-playing train rolling!
I’m posting this today even though there’s one more weekend left in May because I know what we’re playing this weekend and there’s nothing new. Going to play some old favourites instead.
So, without further adieu (all of my adieu was eaten by a giant dragon from another realm anyway), let’s get started!
Imbalanced Boardgames – What’s Wrong With These People?
Yesterday, in the midst of watching my blog views go to new heights because of a small bit of Terraforming Mars news, I saw this tweet from Robin David on Twitter:
Cold blooded! pic.twitter.com/hAZLBeEjfd
— Robin David (@robinwriting) May 27, 2020
This tweet highlighted comments from designer Richard Garfield in an interview with the DiceBreaker web site.
In the interview, Garfield is talking about his many game designs, his thoughts on designing, and especially the many deck-building games that he has been involved with, all the way back to Magic: the Gathering.
However, what my post (and Robin’s tweet) is about is his view on designing “different” games.
This view saddens me, even as I know it’s true and I sometimes have to stop myself from succumbing to that feeling myself.
Take Root, for example. Up to six different factions (and more with the new expansion that just came out), all with asymmetric powers and different requirements for playing well.
Boardgame Geek Top 100 – Played or Play? 80-71
It’s week 3 of our weekly look through the Boardgame Geek Top 100 to see what games I’ve played and which ones I may be interested in playing.
Last week I got educated about Dominion, maybe even enough to try it again some day.
What will this week bring?
Maybe a treatise on train games?
You got that in you, Dave? (let’s see if he reads this…)
I picture Dave like this.
Anyway, this week there are a lot more that I’ve played, and some good stuff in here.
And some…well, not so good stuff. At least for me.
So let’s get started!
Wingspan Digital App on Steam – Beta Impressions
Wingspan is one of the more popular games out there right at the moment, with it arriving in January 2019 by sitting on a wire and crapping onto a whole bunch of tables.
No, sorry, that’s taking the bird metaphor a bit too far. It’s actually an excellent game that I’ve played three times now (twice at Dice Tower West!). It would probably have made my Top 25 Games I’ve Played list if I hadn’t played it shortly after doing that list.
This game, designed by Elizabeth Hargrave and published by Stonemaier Games, is a tableau-building game where each card is a unique bird in North America (unless you’re playing with the European expansion cards).
And now it’s coming to digital form, as announced last year.
Over last weekend, the beta was opened up and I was a part of it.
I think it may be unusual that a beta for a game is only open for 4 days, but that’s the way that developer Monster Couch wanted it.
(Please note that all images are screen shots taken from the beta, so it’s not necessarily final graphics. Also these impressions are from the beta, so the interface and stuff might change too)
It’s looking pretty good even in beta form!
Talisman – Legendary Decks
In addition to the three new characters that Nomad Games recently released for the digital version of Talisman, they also released a series of what are called “Legendary Decks” for the base game and a number of the expansions.
These Legendary Decks are for the base game, Reaper expansion, Highlands expansion, and the Dungeon expansion.
Tiny Epic Pirates on Kickstarter
Gamelyn Games is the king of tiny yet epic games (hence the titles of many of their games, I guess!).
I’m a big fan of Tiny Epic Galaxies, but so far haven’t really had the chance to try any of their other ones.
However, the email I received yesterday may just get me trying another one.
Tiny Epic Pirates is a big game in a small box.
The game is designed by Scott Almes with artwork by Chip Cole, Nikoletta Vaszi, Ian Rosenthaler, Benjamin Shulman, and Felix Wermke.
In the game, players are pirates trying to bury all of their wealth on some deserted islands (presumably so they can dig it up later?)
Boardgame Geek Top 100 – Played or Play? 90-81
With the previous post in this series doing so well, I guess I should do more of them and finish the job, eh?
Last week’s post was a lot of fun and I got some great feedback. Thanks to those of you who stopped by and left your thoughts.
This week (assuming I don’t do two posts a week) we’re going to be looking at #90-81 of the Boardgame Geek Top 100 and we’ll see just how many of them I’ve played before.
And how many I just don’t want to play.
Spoiler: there’s a couple in this one!
In the comments last week, I said that I thought I’ve played 40 of the Top 100 games. Anyone want to hazard a guess whether that’s a low or a high estimate?
Lay your bets! Lay your bets, but don’t bet on red…
Now that you’ve blown all of your money on me, let’s get started.
Dude! Take Your Turn! 